We are all unique individuals with unique personalities and life circumstances which create unique perspectives from which we view the world. As such, we tend to react to challenges based on our specific hurts from our personal past.💛When someone or something touches upon this internal bruise, we instinctively put up a wall around our heart in an effort to avoid reliving the pain. At best, this creates a barrier between yourself and the person with whom you are trying to connect - leaving you both feeling misunderstood or isolated. At worst, it wounds the other person in the same way in which you yourself are hurting.💛The only way to move beyond this destructive pattern is to allow yourself to feel the defensiveness, hurt, or not-enoughness and choose not to attribute blame to any external circumstance. No one MAKES you feel any particular way. It is the wound within you that is triggered by the situation.💛You choose your response either by ignoring and invalidating your suffering or by acknowledging and honoring it. Until we heal the parts inside of us that are hurting, we will continue to hurt others in the exact same way. It is up to us break the cycle and transform our trauma rather than transfer it.